Tag: exercise

Holy Cow! I’m almost done!! It feels like forever since the last time I had all sorts of things. I honestly barely miss some things (rice? what’s that?) while other things I’m fantasizing about (omnom gimme challah). My Whole30 Daily email today was about the “now what?” moment after Day 30. The people behind the Whole30 insist that “It starts with food”, but it doesn’t end there. Whole Health is an amalgam of 9 interconnected factors:

I have to say, eating VegWhole30 hasn’t been the amazing, life changing magic that I expected. Now, to their credit, the website is very clear about the fact that it does not believe vegetarianism is a sustainable healthy diet in the long term. I of course disagree for several reasons. In any case, they include a disclaimer saying that doing Whole30 as a vegetarian could not guarantee you the same life changing effects that doing Whole30 the regular way could bring. Still, I was hoping I’d see a bit more difference in myself. Oh well. That brings me back to the Whole9 point. I have some deep rooted physical and emotional needs that won’t all be taken care of by changing what I eat. So, succinctly, here are some brainstorming ideas for what I would want for living my best life:

Nutrition: continue eating well, even after Whole30. Continue to develop my meal plan and meal prep skills so that I can save money and eat better consistently.

Sleep: sleeping 8 hours a night. The overwhelming majority of what I read about sleep assumes that I, like apparently most people, have trouble sleeping. Even doctors I’ve spoken to start spouting off suggestions about how I should dim my lights and turn off my electronics, yada yada, without listening to me when I say I could stare at my phone for an hour in a brightly lit room after exercising at night and having a big dinner, and I could still sleep for 10 hours and want a nap the next day. I don’t need suggestions on how to fall asleep or stay asleep. I need suggestions on how to stay awake and clear headed! I feel like it’s gotten better this month, but I’m still not where I want to be.

Exercise: supplement my dancing with yoga and strength training, maybe even some fundamental dance skills like beginning ballet or ballet barre. I would also love to learn a new skill just for fun, like aerial circus arts!

Stress management: I have decided that having a massage a month would make my life a lot better. I’ve been putting this off for a very long time, but it’s finally time to make it a priority. It took me waking up with severe torticolis and being stiff necked for days this week to finally get me and my husband to the point where we say “yeah, budgeting for a massage a month sounds like a great idea!”

Temperance: I think this has to do with limiting yourself on certain things? I mean, this kind of feeds into my previous statement of limiting myself to less sleep. However, one thing I’ve noticed? I have trouble eating without something else going on; looking at my phone, watching tv, reading, etc. I should really challenge myself to eating with no distractions more often.

Active recovery: Ooh boy. Physically? I have flat feet. I could get that checked out. But really, it’s my mental health that I should be focusing on active recovery with. I could journal, I could fill out CBT worksheets, find a creative arts therapist, all sorts of stuff. I’d have to look into it.

Personal growth: so many things I want to do! I wish I could learn all the things! I could start by keeping up with weekly torah portions, like I always say I will and don’t actually do.

Fun and play: I’ve been giving myself a lot more me time to play video games recently, and I realized how much I missed it! I hope to keep it up when school starts.

I am again two thirds away from the end of the program. Yay, double digits! This feels like a good time to go over some of the non-food related items on the program as outlined by my Whole30 Daily emails that I really should start getting a move on.

Sleep: My problem has never been that I don’t sleep enough. In fact, I sleep too much. However, because I have PTSD, and have struggled with depression and TMJD (temporomandibular jaw disorder) for most of my life, the quality of sleep that I get is not very good. What ends up happening is that I sleep too much, and still feel tired. I could sleep 12 hours, wake up, and then 2 hours later have a 3 hour nap- all without impairing my ability to sleep at night. What I want to be able to do is train my body to reduce its sleeping time, meaning I want to be able to sleep only 8-9 hours a night, not take naps longer than 30 minutes during the day, and still be fine. That sounds like a dream to me! My Whole30 Daily emails tell me I should be waking up near dawn. That idea makes me really sad because I’m a night owl. They also say that I should establish a regular bedtime and waking up time, which sounds more realistic at the moment. If I could go to bed at 1:00 AM and wake up at 9:00 or 10:00 six out of seven days in a week, it would be fantastic. Fortunately, I never developed a caffeine addiction (like most people in my country), so I don’t have that holding me back.

Magnesium: My doctor had already told me that I should look into getting magnesium and lithium supplements to help my mental health. Interestingly, she said taking magnesium supplements may help me because I have night sweats, and these can sometimes be caused by a salt imbalance in the body (and magnesium is a salt.) However, she cautioned me to avoid magnesium oxide supplements, as she said that magnesium oxide is basically useless because we just pee it out. This is apparently the same thing that happens with zinc oxide. Instead of magnesium oxide, she recommends 200 to 400 mg of magnesium citrate, glycinate, fumarate, or taurate twice a day. Interestingly, Whole30 Daily also recommends taking magnesium, and specifically recommends taking Natural Calm before bedtime. I am definitely planning on giving this a try. It is a 350 mg dose of magnesium citrate in the form of a fizzy beverage powder. You mean I don’t have to take yet another pill? Heck yes!

Exercise: Of course I’ve been belly dancing, but I have known for a while that I need to supplement my dancing with another sort of “regular” workout to improve my endurance, strength, and flexibility. My university’s gym offers free group exercise classes, but since I’m not enrolled in classes this summer, I can’t take those until the fall. I hadn’t enrolled in anything else because of money. Whole30 Daily sent me a conveniently long list of exercises I can do without spending any money. Unfortunately, most of them involve running. I hate running. I can’t think of many exercises I’d despise more. And yet… sigh. Maybe I should give this list of 31 exercises a try for the rest of the summer. If I do one each, 6 days out of the week for the rest of my summer break, I’ll finish them all by the time school starts again. I’m more likely to do that than kettle bells, which the emails also suggest. I would probably need to get up pretty early if I’m going to be running anywhere, since it’s summer in Texas and the heat here literally kills people. More motivation to stick to a sleep schedule, I suppose? Also, I hope I’ll be able to go back to yoga again soon, because I miss it.

Look at me, doing all these things I never thought I’d do. Eating eggs on a regular basis. Running. Eating things like beets that I used to hate. Maybe there is something to the “Whole30 will change your life” thing after all.

I leave you with a slightly confusing, yet oddly insightful InspiroBot quote.

I am one week away from participating in my first ever competition. I’m competing in two categories, as a soloist and as a member of a dance troupe. I am nervous, but also really excited. I’m getting down to the nitty gritty of planning my hair and makeup, I just got my costume fitted, and have plans for a mani pedi spa day to prepare. Oh, and of course, dancing every damn day.

I have a Russian dance teacher, who is very sweet and also has very high Russian dance teacher standards. I know I’ve done well when she doesn’t tell me I’ve made many mistakes. So it means all the more to me for her to tell me that she thinks I have really good chances in this competition, and that I’ve gotten much better.

So what does any of this have to do with Whole30?

Of course, Whole30 really isn’t just about food, it’s about lifestyle. That includes things like stress, sleep, and exercise. Dancing has been my favourite exercise hands down, for so many reasons. Belly dancing has been a huge part of my life for years, and one of my favourite things about it is that I’ve seen dancers of all shapes, sizes, ages, and genders. Once I realized that no one was asking me to be 90 lbs and that I was actually good at this dance, my self esteem shot through the roof. It would be easy to forget how much exercise it actually is were it not for the fact that I’m kind of a swamp monster and I sweat profusely. I used to do yoga a few times a week too, which I loved dearly. I’ll get back to it when we can spare the extra $100 for the unlimited monthly pass at the place I was going at.

Anyway, I digress. On a more practical level, being in the competition next week means I’m going to have to take some extra food prep precautions. The competition is part of a 4 day long convention, of which I’m going to 3 full days. That means I need to be prepared to pack about 5 meals while I’m there, because I’m almost positive there will be nothing there that I can eat. I also have to make sure the food is substantial enough to get me through multiple hours of dancing every day. Energy snacks may be in order for this one.

I’m open to suggestions, as always! In the meantime, I’ll be over here making faces at myself in the mirror to practice my stage face. Game ON.